Liz Cheney Is Still the Distillation of All That I Distrust in Never Trump Republicans
She lost her gig as everyone knew she would. But the prion disease that gave her a political career goes merrily on.
_By Charles P. Pierce
May 12, 2021
topshot us representative liz cheney, republican of wyoming, speaks to the press at the us capitol in washington, dc, on may 12, 2021 house republicans voted wednesday to oust anti trump conservative cheney from her leadership role confirming that the party out of power in washington is casting its lot with the former us president
I have stayed away from the prolonged martyrdom of Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost her gig on Wednesday morning, in no small part because I do not find the event as signifying as many of my colleagues do.
In truth, all the Republicans in the House did was swap out one No. 3 in their leadership roster for another, and brawls in the monkey house bore me. In addition, there was nothing remotely surprising about anything that happened. After all, people were throwing roses in Cheney’s path for all of her long trudge towers Golgotha in the meeting room on Wednesday for months now.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy demonstrated that he is Washington’s highest ranking invertebrate lifeforms, as if that’s any kind of shock any more.
The only lesson I can see emerging from this prolonged slapfight is that, now, the Trump Republican Position is that Joe Biden was not really elected president, and the Moderate Republican Position is that Biden actually was elected, but with the tacit understanding that he not act like he was elected president. That job was left to Mitch McConnell and Prime Minister Joe Manchin.
Republicans: Stop Electing Insufferable Dickheads
And while she gave a nice speech to a House chamber devoid of Republicans on Tuesday night, Liz Cheney remains the person who saw nothing wrong with the former president*’s policies 92 percent of the time he was in office.
Prior to that, she spent a lot of time being birther-curious during the Obama years, defending her inexcusable father’s relentless attack on the very rule of law that she is now being fulsomely praised for defending, mongering war, carpetbagging her way into Congress from a state where nobody lives, and being an unusually vehement modern conservative hatchetperson.
If the Trumps are the one family that should be kept away from power at whatever the cost, the Cheneys are strong contenders for second place.
So, while I would have golf-clapped for her speech on Tuesday night and, unlike nearly all of her Republican colleagues, I certainly would have sat there and listened, I still find in Liz Cheney the distillation of all that I distrust in the Never Trump faction of the Republican Party.
Frankly, it’s a little weird that it took a violent assault on her workplace to get the scales to drop from her eyes. I am not going to wave any palm fronds at her for saying what countless liberals have been saying about modern conservatism for decades now.
Ultimately, though, Cheney’s celebrated apostasy is simply a more dramatic attempt to argue that the fault lies solely with the former president* and not with the 40 years of policies that made someone like him not only possible but sadly invitable.
Frankly, it’s a little weird that it took a violent assault on Cheney's workplace to get the scales to drop from her eyes.
And those policies will not change, no matter what Liz Cheney says, or this latest group of Republican apostates does. From The New York Times:
“When in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice,” reads the preamble to the full statement, which is expected to be released on Thursday. “This is a first step,” said Miles Taylor, an organizer of the effort and a former Trump-era Department of Homeland Security official who anonymously wrote a book condemning the Trump administration.
In October, Mr. Taylor acknowledged he was the author of both the book and a 2018 New York Times Op-Ed article. “This is us saying that a group of more than 100 prominent Republicans think that the situation has gotten so dire with the Republican Party that it is now time to seriously consider whether an alternative might be the only option,” he said.
Well, this certainly will keep the speaker’s fees high and the book deals rolling in and the cable news bookers busy, but it will do fck-all about anything else.
Unless you’re willing to enact ranked-choice voting, any third-party attempt is doomed to irrelevance and impotence. And, even if this dead elephant could fly, would these people be willing to abandon the Republican-conservative devotion to crackpot Gilded Age economics, to there national campaign of voter-suppression, to a sensible policy on reproductive freedom?
Will the new party divorce itself from the theocratic elements of the conservative base? How about environmental legislation? Ready to give up on knee-jerk deregulation? White people, please.
So Liz Cheney lost her gig as everyone knew she would. The prion disease that gave her a political career goes merrily on. After she lost the gig, she spoke to reporters.
“We must go forward based on truth,” Ms. Cheney told reporters. “We cannot both embrace the big lie and embrace the Constitution.”
And, in the background, you could hear the faint rattling of aluminum tubes. Swear to god, you could.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl23766683
She lost her gig as everyone knew she would. But the prion disease that gave her a political career goes merrily on.
_By Charles P. Pierce
May 12, 2021
topshot us representative liz cheney, republican of wyoming, speaks to the press at the us capitol in washington, dc, on may 12, 2021 house republicans voted wednesday to oust anti trump conservative cheney from her leadership role confirming that the party out of power in washington is casting its lot with the former us president
I have stayed away from the prolonged martyrdom of Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost her gig on Wednesday morning, in no small part because I do not find the event as signifying as many of my colleagues do.
In truth, all the Republicans in the House did was swap out one No. 3 in their leadership roster for another, and brawls in the monkey house bore me. In addition, there was nothing remotely surprising about anything that happened. After all, people were throwing roses in Cheney’s path for all of her long trudge towers Golgotha in the meeting room on Wednesday for months now.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy demonstrated that he is Washington’s highest ranking invertebrate lifeforms, as if that’s any kind of shock any more.
The only lesson I can see emerging from this prolonged slapfight is that, now, the Trump Republican Position is that Joe Biden was not really elected president, and the Moderate Republican Position is that Biden actually was elected, but with the tacit understanding that he not act like he was elected president. That job was left to Mitch McConnell and Prime Minister Joe Manchin.
Republicans: Stop Electing Insufferable Dickheads
And while she gave a nice speech to a House chamber devoid of Republicans on Tuesday night, Liz Cheney remains the person who saw nothing wrong with the former president*’s policies 92 percent of the time he was in office.
Prior to that, she spent a lot of time being birther-curious during the Obama years, defending her inexcusable father’s relentless attack on the very rule of law that she is now being fulsomely praised for defending, mongering war, carpetbagging her way into Congress from a state where nobody lives, and being an unusually vehement modern conservative hatchetperson.
If the Trumps are the one family that should be kept away from power at whatever the cost, the Cheneys are strong contenders for second place.
So, while I would have golf-clapped for her speech on Tuesday night and, unlike nearly all of her Republican colleagues, I certainly would have sat there and listened, I still find in Liz Cheney the distillation of all that I distrust in the Never Trump faction of the Republican Party.
Frankly, it’s a little weird that it took a violent assault on her workplace to get the scales to drop from her eyes. I am not going to wave any palm fronds at her for saying what countless liberals have been saying about modern conservatism for decades now.
Ultimately, though, Cheney’s celebrated apostasy is simply a more dramatic attempt to argue that the fault lies solely with the former president* and not with the 40 years of policies that made someone like him not only possible but sadly invitable.
Frankly, it’s a little weird that it took a violent assault on Cheney's workplace to get the scales to drop from her eyes.
And those policies will not change, no matter what Liz Cheney says, or this latest group of Republican apostates does. From The New York Times:
“When in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice,” reads the preamble to the full statement, which is expected to be released on Thursday. “This is a first step,” said Miles Taylor, an organizer of the effort and a former Trump-era Department of Homeland Security official who anonymously wrote a book condemning the Trump administration.
In October, Mr. Taylor acknowledged he was the author of both the book and a 2018 New York Times Op-Ed article. “This is us saying that a group of more than 100 prominent Republicans think that the situation has gotten so dire with the Republican Party that it is now time to seriously consider whether an alternative might be the only option,” he said.
Well, this certainly will keep the speaker’s fees high and the book deals rolling in and the cable news bookers busy, but it will do fck-all about anything else.
Unless you’re willing to enact ranked-choice voting, any third-party attempt is doomed to irrelevance and impotence. And, even if this dead elephant could fly, would these people be willing to abandon the Republican-conservative devotion to crackpot Gilded Age economics, to there national campaign of voter-suppression, to a sensible policy on reproductive freedom?
Will the new party divorce itself from the theocratic elements of the conservative base? How about environmental legislation? Ready to give up on knee-jerk deregulation? White people, please.
So Liz Cheney lost her gig as everyone knew she would. The prion disease that gave her a political career goes merrily on. After she lost the gig, she spoke to reporters.
“We must go forward based on truth,” Ms. Cheney told reporters. “We cannot both embrace the big lie and embrace the Constitution.”
And, in the background, you could hear the faint rattling of aluminum tubes. Swear to god, you could.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl23766683
